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A Novel
by R. F. Kuang
Book Reviewed by:Dante's Inferno meets Susanna Clarke's Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor's soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.
The story of a hero's descent to the underworld.
Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.
That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
Grimes is now in Hell, and she's going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….
Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.
With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don't even like.
But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn't always the answer, and there's something in Alice and Peter's past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.
Chapter One
For I deem that the true votary of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood by other men; they do not perceive that he is always pursuing death and dying; and if this be so, and he has had the desire of death all his life long, why when his time comes should he repine at that which he has been always pursuing and desiring?
PLATO, PHAEDO
Cambridge, Michaelmas Term, October. The wind bit, the sun hid, and on the first day of class, when she ought to have been lecturing undergraduates about the dangers of using the Cartesian severance spell to revise without pee breaks, Alice Law set out to rescue her advisor's soul from the Eight Courts of Hell.
It was a terrible gruesome accident that killed Professor Jacob Grimes, and from a certain point of view it was her fault, and so for reasons of both moral obligation and self-interest—for without Professor Grimes she had no committee chair, and without a committee chair she could not defend her dissertation, graduate, or apply ...
Alice and Peter descend through Hell searching for Grimes, and as they do, Kuang builds a geography of its circles, or courts, that mirrors both Cambridge and, metaphorically, the structures of academia: Pride is a library in which scholars must defend their theories; Desire is a storm-battered student union. Later circles mock the absurdities of research culture, tenure battles, and intellectual pretension. As they proceed, Alice begins to question both her motivation for finding her advisor and her desire to become a magician, and wonders if her dream has been worth all the sacrifices she's made; and as her rigidly defined goals slip away, she must seek a new sense of purpose...continued
Full Review
(741 words)
(Reviewed by Pei Chen).
#1 New York Times bestselling author, Leigh Bardugo
Rich with allusion and illusion, Kuang crafts a witty, gory, harrowing ride that thoroughly roasts the perils and power structures of academia, while never losing sight of what it means to have a fragile, human heart. Rebecca Ross, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Divine Rivals
A spellbinding and poignant story that had me riveted to the pages, R.F. Kuang's Katabasis is more than a novel to savor. This book is an experience. I envy those who get to read it for the first time.
R.F. Kuang's Katabasis is part of a long lineage of stories about traveling into the underworld; in fact, the novel's title is the Ancient Greek name for these stories. These are journeys that test the hero, reshape their understanding of life, and force them to confront questions of mortality and meaning; the hero's descents are never merely about a new geography, they are about transformation.
In the Western canon, these stories began with Homer and Virgil. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus ventures into Hades to consult the prophet Tiresias, seeking knowledge. In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas is guided by the Sibyl in his katabasis, which forces him to confront his personal grief, as he meets the shade (the dead soul) of his father Anchises....
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Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
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